Tuesday, 31 December 1974

More history, no more pics. I started 1974 stumbling down to the
Bill in the gloom, staring at my feet and ignoring a couple of flushed shapes
that may have been Blackbirds and calling gulls overhead. There had been a flock of up to nine Velvet
Scoters semi-resident off the Bill and on reaching the Obelisk I whipped my
binoculars up to where they had been the previous evening. Sure enough five were still there. My first bird of 1974, as I had hoped it would
be. Later I saw my first live Great Northern
Divers in Portland Harbour but they were eclipsed by a male Long-tailed
Duck. It held its tail at an angle of
30-45 degrees above the water where it was occasionally caught by the wind –
brilliant.

Trips during the spring term included
a weekend in Dorset and Hampshire (Red-necked Grebe a new bird and 100
Bramblings), Tregaron (41 Whooper Swans, Red Kite, Red Grouse, Dipper and Great
Grey Shrike) and an unsuccessful visit to Blackpill for Ring-billed Gull. I returned home at Easter seeing Rough-legged
Buzzard at Windover Hill (after camping up there), visited Pagham by train and
bus and spent three nights wardening at Rye Harbour where I saw three pairs of
Garganey. On the last day three males
were chasing a female around one of the pits.
It was the first time I’d heard them call – a peculiar and unforgettable
crackling or rattling like a ruler being run along a corrugated radiator. This was trumped by a Firecrest in our garden
for most of one day. While watching it at
5m range from the kitchen window it flared out its crest to two or three times
its usual thickness – a brilliant fiery red-orange and one of the brightest
colours I’d ever seen.

I really did not want to go back to
University, mid course blues, and a few days stay at Portland Bird Observatory
got extended by a week – I only had lectures on three days and was sure that I
could soon catch up. I’d started
sea-watching and seen a good selection of common migrants although nothing
unusual. My absence had been noted, one
of the tutors knowing of my interest in birds asked if I’d been carried off by
an eagle? No just gripped by an
albatross was my reply, something reported from a seawatch while I was at
Portland. I’d enjoyed Portland so much I
went straight back down for a long weekend seeing more of the same plus the
long staying dark ‘Blue’ Fulmar. The
later had been seen from the West Cliffs and after half an hour there a
wooshing sound directly over my head caused me to look up and there it was
hanging in the air barely five feet away before going off to do another circuit
of the cliffs. I watched it for about 20 minutes before it finally left. It had no white on it at all, just paler
traces in the wings. At times it looked
a different shape too. On my last day I
had a look around Radipole Lake before catching the train back to Cardiff and
bumped into some birders watching a Terek Sandpiper! It was the bird that had wintered in Devon
and I’d turned down a one-way lift to go for it on my previous visit to Portland (a regret that had not lasted long).

I went on a Spring Bank Holiday minibus
trip to East Anglia organised by Peter Lansdown, one of the top birders I had
met. We saw a trip of 6 Dotterel in
Cambridgeshire, 4 Stone Curlew, Bittern, Red-backed Shrike and female Montagu’s
Harrier (all new birds). The Dotterel
were very approachable with four in full summer-plumage – stunning. We had to wait for four hours to see the
harrier but when it appeared at Titchwell it thrilled us with a superb aerial
display including stoops and throw-ups which I noted lasted 37 minutes! During a week revising at home in early June I
returned to the Cuckmere where I’d seen a Cirl Bunting in early April. The male was in almost exactly the same place
and even better was carrying food to the back of some nettles. The female was also seen carrying food and
there was clearly a nest there although it was not in a position where it could
be seen. Back at University I was
immersed in exams but as soon as they were over I caught a train to Beaulieu Road
for a couple of days in the New Forest.
It was summer and I didn’t think I’d need a tent or sleeping bag. Foolish me, it was a clear night and freezing and I got
hardly any sleep at all – trains passing through the night not helping in that
respect. I returned to Cardiff and the
next day went to Pembrokeshire where I saw my first Chough (7 at Elegug Stack)
and two days later Dave Pitman and I started hitching to Scotland.

We left Cardiff early morning and
hitched up to Perth where we slept in some large pipes by the road. Traffic had thinned out considerable and with no lifts we
got a bus and train on to Aviemore and camped at Loch Morlich. Lack of transport was a bigger problem than
we had anticipated and we had to do everything on foot. Going up to the Cairngorm Chairlift was OK
but Loch Garten was too far to day-trip and we packed up the tent and
walked. The Ospreys were good but the
wardens not very welcoming. Dave had had
enough, left me his tent and hitched back to Cardiff. I walked back to Loch Morlich intending to
spend a couple more days there before getting a train to Aberdeen and visiting
the Shetlands. At Loch Morlich I was
very fortunate to meet up with Ian Whitehouse and his non-birding friend who
had a car. On my first day on the tops with
Dave (chairlift to Cairngorm, walk to Ben Macdui and back down) we had seen a
Ptarmigan and four Dotterel. I took Ian
and friend back to the same area where we saw the Ptarmigan and Dotterel and
continued on towards Ben Macdui where we had two 2 singing male Snow Buntings. On the way back we encountered 2 Dotterel
with 3 small but very mobile chicks. The
adults didn’t seem concerned by us although they made sure that their chicks
were not too inquisitive.
Utterly captivating. Ian and friend were
heading up to Caithness and asked if I’d like to join them. I certainly would and we headed for Fariad
Head via Loch Laide. We filled up with petrol at Kylestrome (hand pumped by an attractive lass) but missed the last ferry at and camped by the road.
After seeing Corncrake at Faraid Head we drove back down to Strathconnon
where we saw 2 Golden Eagles and spent two more days in Rothiemuchus failing to
find Capercallie. We told ourselves that
it probably wasn’t the best time of year to look for them. Ian’s friend had to go back but Ian and I
went on to Shetland catching the overnight ferry from Aberdeen.

Ian and I spent a week on Shetland
visiting Noss and Fetlar. The seabird
colony on the cliffs at Noss was amazing although my first view of it, from
Bressay, was not particularly spectacular, a small green island sloping away to
the east before it drops into the sea on the opposite side. Once we’d landed on Noss the walk around
became more and more interesting and it finally reached an unbelievable climax
with the 600ft cliffs at Noup of Noss.
Before reaching the Noup I was amazed by the number of Great and Arctic
Skuas, Fulmars and very tame Puffins. As
the cliffs rose they were joined by Kittiwakes and some auks but it was not
until the Noup that I saw Gannets on the cliffs – a true seabird colony with
thousands of birds on the ledges, in the water and in the air. Each individual seemed to be adding to the
noise, and smell which at times was almost overpowering. The cliffs were white with dropping, hardly
surprising when an estimated 50,000 pairs of seabirds were breeding there! On Fetlar a pair of Snowy Owls had 2 small young. A hide had been set up overlooking the nest
from a distance. There was a ‘waiting
room’ the other side of a small hill and on being given permission to proceed
to the hide I climbed to the brow of the hill and was confronted by the male
Snowy Owl banking across in front of me.
Unforgettable. The female and the
chicks were very good too, as were the Red-necked Phalaropes which we saw
regularly near our campsite as they chugging around the edge of Loch Funzie
catching insects above the surface like a clockwork toy but with more grace and
agility than it would ever be possible to programme mechanically.

While on Shetland I became fascinated
by the skuas and their differing methods of deterring trespassers (i.e. me) from
their territories. When walking through
a Great Skua colony the particular pair of birds whose territory I had entered would take off from their observation post and fly directly at me 5-10
feet above the ground, veering away at the very last minute. Sometimes while one bird ‘attacked’ me head
on the other would woosh past over my head from the rear. Attempts would often be half-hearted if I was
on the edge of the territory and as I never went close to a chick, all of which
had left the nest, I was never hit, but carrying a stick aloft gave a measure
of protection. Once a territory had been
left the owners would lose interest as the next pair took over. In contrast Arctic Skuas would come in in a
group, up to 9 or 10 birds one after the other, before regrouping and trying
again. Several times I was clipped on
the head and they seemed to mean business more than the Great Skuas. Arctic Skuas also tried feigning a broken
wing to draw me away from a nest, something I never saw Bonxies do. Leaving Shetland I had had enough of hitching
but it was a long journey back by train.

Back in Sussex I twitched a summer
plumaged Spotted Sandpiper at Weir Wood Reservoir (pre-fraudster days!) but the spots were only
visible through a telescope which, without a tripod with me, I rested on
someone’s car roof. I spent the last
week of August camping at Cley with Dave Pitman seeing Barred & Icterine
Warblers, Wryneck and a Purple Heron at Hickling although we missed a
Black-winged Pratincole seen over the marsh late one afternoon. The highlight was a good fall on Blakeney
Point on 30 August with 80 Pied Flycatchers, a Red-backed Shrike, Wood Warbler
and 7 Wrynecks in the Plantation and an Icterine Warbler on the Hood. I was now working at the Business Statistics
Office in Newport on the sandwich part of my course but as it was an easy,
almost door to door, commute on the bus I stayed living in Cardiff. I saw 2 Melodious Warblers at Portland and a Grey
Phalarope and White-rumped Sandpiper at Ferrybridge on a day trip. We returned
via Chew Valley Lake where Ruddy Duck was my 4th new bird of the day. My British List was now 234!

me at Portland (photo by Maurice Chown, kicked around a bit by me)

My first foreign birding trip, as
opposed to a family trip abroad where I saw some birds, was a week in Majorca with
Richard Bosanquet, Maurice Chown, Graham Hearl, Pete Naylor and Nigel
Redman. Maurice & Graham had met the
others who were from around London on the Scillies the previous autumn. Graham had an eye for a deal and got us a
cheap (out of season) package tour to Puerto Pollensa where we hired a
car. It was quite a squeeze for 6 and on
one occasion I managed to shut the door on Maurice’s fingers not realising he
was coming out my way, ouch! We went late to maximise the chance of seeing
Eleanora’s Falcons which were excellent.
One blustery morning at Cabo Formentor we had excellent views of nine in
the air at one time (and 15 in total that day).
They were stopping several hundred feet and ‘throwing up’ to return to
their original height, a little above us, at seemingly faster speeds than their
descents. All the time they were calling
‘keya keya keya’. The rough sea several hundred feet below was
the perfect backdrop. We also saw
Cory’s and Balearic Shearwaters (on one occasion I had Cory’s and Eleanora’s in
the same telescope view!), Booted Eagle, Black Vulture, Blue Rock Thrush and
Olivaceous and Marmora’s Warblers. I saw
100 species, 15 were new and the trip cost £60!
Back in the UK autumn was pretty much over and quite an anti-climax. A weekend in East Anglia in mid November with
Maurice produced 2 Rough-legged Buzzards, 4 Shore Larks, 3 Great Grey Shrikes
and 100+ Snow Buntings. Otherwise I was
finding the routine of working 9-5 every day rather restrictive but made weekend
visits to the usual Welsh sites. I returned home
for Christmas and on a visit with my dad to Church Norton on Christmas Eve saw 2 Swallows hawking insects low over the sheltered beach near the graveyard.[blogged April 2014]